Brutal but I think I like it.

I first met this architectural style in the middle of Sydney, where the Masonic centre is a technically proficient example of 'brutalism'. Basically, the building is built from bare concrete, is stolid and soulless.
So I was very surprised, not to say taken, with the Basilica of Our Lady of Tears in Syracusa.

The story starts in a nearby house in which Antonina and Angelo Iannuso were staying after their marriage. As a present they had been given a plaster plaque of the Virgin Mary, massed produced in Tuscany. Now Antonina discovered she was pregnant, 4 months after the wedding, and was afflicted with toxaemia that caused convulsions and some blindness. At 3 a.m. On 29/Aug/1953 she had a seizure that left her blind. However, by 08:30 she recovered her sight and noticed that the Madonna was weeping.
As soon as the new got out, the house was besieged by the curious and the sick, some of whom claimed to be cured immediately. So great was the crowd that the police took the statue to the Police station for safety, but returned it as it stopped working. A commission (of churchmen) was formed to investigate and quickly confirmed the authenticity of the event and of the tears. Since then over a 100 miraculous cures have been documented and this Santuario Madonna Delle Lacrime built in honour.

The building appears quite light and insubstantial from the outside, an effect magnified inside where the space doesn't seem big enough to hold 6,000 people sitting and 11,000 standing; but it can, and ones attention is drawn upwards with little to hold it down. It feels like an infinite space, say the inside of the Tardis, 103m tall and 71.4m wide, without becoming a railway station. Maybe it's the lack of an echo coupled to the lines of the walls, but it works.
I've spared you a photo of '... Frozen tears' which are the reason for the edifice. Frankly unconvincing and too dark in the crypt, although I did manage to snap an old chapel uncovered during construction work and remarkably well integrated into the present structure.
A chapel off the crypt shows the simple and effective decoration that relieves the grey concrete.Read more